When I talked to my friend that has a company that TiN coats cutting tools today, he said that after a poor December and a so-so January, his February is booming! I hope it's a good sign to see industrial cutting tools in high demand.
Yes, that is a good sign.
I own a small electronic assembly service in Redmond, Oregon. We are seeing a significant increase in business. However, it is coming from companies that have either laid off most of their production workers and now need to have some assembly work done, or another that has had significant price increases from their assembly house and have decided to have the work done locally. Good for us, but bad for the other companies. Economically it is a net zero.
In these times, a company is looking for stability and we offer that. Now, if we can just make it financially for one or two more weeks, we will be ok. Assuming we can get some companies to pay their bills!
We will take any work we can get. And the metal working part is I get to mill more aluminum tooling plates to hold the panels of printed circuit boards in the solder paste stencil machine.
Paul
The economy is not is bad as the Democrats have been painting it. Today in the WSJ is an article comparing todays economy to 1981 and
1930.Dan
By BRADLEY R. SCHILLER
President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package. [Commentary] AP
In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.
This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the
1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931,
6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82. The Opinion Journal WidgetDownload Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.
This was reflected in unemployment rates. The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That's more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%). You simply can't equate 7.6% unemployment with the Great Depression.
Other economic statistics also dispel any analogy between today's economic woes and the Great Depression. Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That's comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%.
Auto production last year declined by roughly 25%. That looks good compared to 1932, when production shriveled by 90%. The failure of a couple of dozen banks in 2008 just doesn't compare to over 10,000 bank failures in 1933, or even the 3,000-plus bank (Savings & Loan) failures in 1987-88. Stockholders can take some solace from the fact that the recent stock market debacle doesn't come close to the 90% devaluation of the early 1930s.
Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.
Mr. Schiller, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, is the author of "The Economy Today" (McGraw-Hill, 2007).
Keep in mind that on the timeline the the recession, we are not yet at the end of the "year after the crash". The crash of 2008 is obviously followed by year 2009, just as the crash of 1929 was followed by year
1930. So, comparing where we are now, with 1930, simply is a "apples to oranges" comparison. When 2009 ends, it could be properly compared to 1930.So far, the speed of the contraction, given that we are at a much earlier stage in it than we would be at the end of 1930, is very rapid by any standards.
The Great Depression of 1930 and The great Recession of 2009, are both crises of debt and deleveraging. Events of 1981-1982 were of rather different nature, dealing with taming inflation.
Here you are comparing predicions of CBO, with actual course of events.
Without the bailout, banks such as Citibank would fail, money market accounts drawn down, with a quick domino effect to follow, and drop of
9% would not be out of realm of possibilities.
Try to compare it to January 1930.
It follows, reasonably well, the timeline up to early 1930. (which, to me, has no predictive meaning).
This article is intellectually dishonest, as he intentionaly compares early stages of this recession with late stages of 1930's depression.
i
In every recession I've ever lived through (and even from what little I know of The Big One in the '30s), life has always gone on.
At some point people get tired of not buying stuff, and companies realize that sitting still in a dark room isn't going to save them.
I suspect that we'll see some realignment in the economy if the Dems don't get too enthusiastic (there was actually a Rick Lowry piece in the paper today that I agreed with, on just this topic), but I very much doubt that we're all going to sit shivering and starving on the streets outside of our former homes while the sun slowly goes out.
Manufacturers that were doing their own coating have shut down those departments and are buying the service. There are also fewer people left doing this work. TiN coating has been obsolete for some years now.
It also ignores the eight trillion dollars pumped into the economy during the last fifteen months of the Bush administration. Badly done or not, the world would have reverted to stone axes and caves had the financial services and insurance industries been allowed to collapse on their own.
JC
And, as there was during the Big One, there will be an endless stream of tenured and degreed naysayers who keep saying that the best thing to do is nothing, that it will all work out in the end.
Fortunately for us all, no one in a major decision-making capacity listened to them. Except that FDR did take them seriously for a short time around
1935, which promptly drove us into an even deeper wave of depression.If you read some analysis by any economist over 50 who is associated with the Univ. of Chicago, or if their biography says anything about the Austrian School or the American Enterprise Institute, Lew Rockwell or the Mises Institute, Cato, or George Mason or Loyola Universities, turn a deaf ear, because they're the voodoo economists who got us here in the first place.
The only thing useful they're saying now is that we have to move fast to get rid of the zombie banks, one way or another. Otherwise, they'd all be happy to see things take 20 years to "work out in the end," for the sole sake of proving the validity of their kooky ideologies. And if we were all living in mud huts when it was over, they'd be perfectly happy, because, they'd say, that's what the market says we deserve.
-- Ed Huntress
In November and December, I didn't have the huge orders from my usual customers. I know their buying patterns and MRP systems better than they do and I knew they were chewing through their safety stock even though their buyers were on notice to cut back on purchases. All my stuff to them goes into the mid-range restaurants. I knew that fast-food was actually on an upswing, high-end eateries were only taking a single digit hit, and my market mid-range restaurants were about the same. So, I decides to keep producing at normal production rates and pack the rafters with product. Well, imagine my smile when my customers call in a panic because their shelves are bare! I've been able to ship from stock and be a hero! I hope they don't keep expecting the zero lead time, I can't afford this inventory level forever. I'll bet they will want to rebuild their safety stock all at once and put me behind the eight-ball having to run overtime and weekends. Idiots!
1932 was probably the worst year of the Great Depression....so we havent hit bottom yet by any means
Gunner
"Upon Roosevelt's death in 1945, H. L. Mencken predicted in his diary that Roosevelt would be remembered as a great president, "maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln," opining that Roosevelt "had every quality that morons esteem in their heroes.""
Might want to ease off on your production just a tad to reflect that single-digit hit without getting stuck with too much inventory - and still be in business and have some on hand to ship when they do have money. Because Ohio is probably like everywhere else, the State will tax you on inventory on hand at the end of the FY, and you don't want to get nailed. The customers running supply-house operations do the same thing, let their stock dwindle to the bare minimum right before the annual inventory count - and if they run Calendar Year, that explains it.
California has finally run out of creative ways to play "Hide the Pea" with the budget and they are talking about some real healthy tax and fee and other "revenue" (wink wink) increases. Which if they get through the courts unscathed (there's a *reason* we put Proposition 13 through!) are only going to make it worse.
(Ahnold The Governator has turned out to be a bigger Girly-Man than Gray Davis ever dreamed of. Maria must have hocked his balls. Anyone want to organize a Sacramento Tea Party?)
-->--
I skipped the meeting, but the Memos showed that Gunner Asch wrote on Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:08:47 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
But by 1934 it was obvious, every time you saw the light at the end of the tunnel, you could be sure the Government would come along and make more tunnel.
Sec Treas Morgantue testified in 1939 that they'd spent all the money, and no reduction in unemployment had resulted. But the National Debt _was_ higher.
-- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!
Unfortunately, you are most likely correct.
The public can't even get a consistent, even if not completely honest, answer of how bad just the toxic home mortgage backed SSCDOs are, with the commercial mortgage backed SSCDOs set to roll a second tsunami, quite likely *larger* than the sub-prime/alt-A one across the financial flood plain in a few months, even as the banksters and broksters [combination of banker/broker and gangster] remain in denial and party on [on our credit card].
Mean while the Detroit three soap opera continues. Class -- can anyone define "triage?"
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
I'm not a big fan of regulation but finance and insurance is a place that a bit of goverment looking out the rest of us might not be too bad.
It is hard to bullshit your way making real physical products but numbers relying on other numbers is a prime place for the bs artist to do their dirty work.
Wes
-------- On the other hand US unemployment never reached the extreme levels it did in other countries, large numbers of people did not starve to death [although there was not a national obesity problem either...] and there was not a "popular revolution," although it got close several times. Additionally, many useful projects, many still in use in my area, were constructed by the WPA/PWA/CCC, so the money was not entirely wasted.
Everything considered, the US dodged a bullet in 1929-39.
Where the stupidity and arrogance comes in 2008/09 is not that we are again spending money on what are quite likely a number of futile or mis guided attempts to stave off or mitigate an economic disaster, but that we have another economic disaster of such magnitude and extent, that we as a nation feel compelled to again spend such sums, especially as all the experience and preventative measures enacted, and all the lessons learned as the result of the last economic h-bomb barrage [1990s dot cons], have been largely forgotten and/or systematically repealed/evaded/ignored.
The fact that such expenditures are felt necessary is one thing, but another thing is that items should have been included in the various stimulus bills such supplemental appropriations for the BLS/BEA/GAO etc. for increased staffing and monitoring of not only how these funds are spent, but the actual results as these wend their way through the economy [or not if they wind up in a safe somewhere]. As it stands now, we are spreading money around like fertilizer, hoping that something grows. While something may indeed grow as the result of the random application of fertilizer, it may well be crabgrass or ragweed... [achoo, achoo]
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
There is a lot of that going on. No one wants to have too much inventory on hand since capital is life. It gives you options.
My employer is seeing sales that are not declining past where we thought the market was going to be. The cuts made was to get to a point where managing up would be the order of the day vs managing down.
It totally sucks if you get kicked to the curb but if you are one of those that get to ride it out, life goes on. If the company outlasts the competition life gets better.
Once upon a time, settlers moved into the interior of the US. The indians killed some of them for that. As bad as it gets now, we are so better off than in times before.
If those reading this have lost their job, well I've been there. It sucks, no pretty face to put on it.
Wes
Sounds like flooding money into Iraq all over again. I hope the left is just as critical about it.
Wes
Unka' George: I was involved in a GAO audit of positions at the Kwajalein Missile Range. My wife was a secretary at another group on the base and the same thing happened to her. The audit team checked my organization (I was in charge of a group of Civil Servant Engineers that were monitoring the contractors operating the range) to see if it's existence was justified. One of their key measurements was, and I'm not BSing, I watched it, they measured the volume of our closed and locked file cabinets. I told them to ask me what my groups goals for the year were; and to apply the questions to other groups that they were auditing. They refused. The Army was in charge and my boss a Lt. Colonel had never given any of us any direction or suggestions other than be "Pro-Active". It this audit team was any indication of the watchdogs that we are going to have over the way the "Stimulus" Bill is spent, we are going to see a whole bunch of inefficient wasting of taxpayer's money. I watched a $750Million dollar contract get mishandled by the Army. I know. I wrote the scope of work for that contract. As a result of the Army's screw up the winning contractor could receive the bonus fee if he just asked for it. There were nocontract clauses specifying contractor performance required to earn the fee.. I don't know about you but I forsee a real circus.
Stu Fields
I don't know how you make that comparison, Wes. The money flooded into Iraq was for the sake of military conquest of a dictatorship, first, and then for a cockeyed idea of building a nation in our image from the remains. The stimulus spending is, first, to get money in the hands of the unemployed or underemployed to restore consumption, and, second, to kickstart some infrastructure projects and some long-term investments in education and energy.
How in the world can those two things sound alike?
-- Ed Huntress
--------- As was proven in S. Vietnam, flooding a country with money is a sure way to kill it. There were girls making more in the PXs/Commissaries than bank presidents. Instant chaos.
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
------- Indeed, and the money that goes into and stays in the bank's vault does neither. Which is another reason to fund "projects" rather than mail out "rebate" checks, or even worse, "inject" banking capital. Given today's environment, individual "rebate" checks go into savings, savings go into the bank vault. Funded projects makes the money circulate at least once before disappearing.
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
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